New Guest: Like this one, most posts are devotional; those related to CAR BIZ can be found by searching for that title. You might read 'Welcome,' the first post, dated November 12, 2008, in the archives
Monday, May 25, 2009
Devotions: Ps 89; Ezek 4:1-17; Heb 6:1-12; Lk 9:51-62
Lord, I will sing of Your steadfast love forever, and proclaim Your faithfulness to every generation! You have made and kept covenant with Your people. Let all creation praise our God! He is holy, and saves those who put faith in Him. He has chosen Israel and the house of David, and through these, God has sent His Son as our Savior and Lord. Despite human sin, God remains true to Himself. Blessed is the Lord our God forever!
God instructs Ezekiel to create a scale model of Jerusalem under siege, then to lie on his left side for 390 days, focusing on this embattled city, as God lays ‘the punishment of the house of Israel upon you.’ Immediately after that, he was to lie on his right side for another forty days, embodying forty years of exile for Judah. God would bind Ezekiel in position during these watches of prophecy. God established the diet for his prophet’s struggle: wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt ground together and eaten as bread, baked over human dung. Ezekiel protested only the latter, and God relented, allowing him to substitute cow manure for human excrement. In all this, Ezekiel was enacting the judgments coming upon faithless Israel and Judah.
The Hebrew writer moves beyond elementary doctrines, ‘For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, have partaken of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of God’s word and the powers of the age to come.’ If these fall away, in effect they are crucifying God’s Son again. These apostates are cursed, and face eternal burning. So, let us stir ourselves to godliness, and serve God and His people! In this way, we will inherit all God has promised.
When His time was fulfilled, Jesus set His face to go to Jerusalem. He sent messengers ahead along His path, to a Samaritan village; but the villagers refused to receive Jesus. James and John asked Jesus if they should call down heavenly fires of judgment on the village; Jesus rebuked them and they went on to a different village. As Jesus proceeded, several people pledged to accompany and follow Him. To each, Jesus’ reply revealed a fallacy in the impetuous pledge: ‘The Son of man has no place to lay His head. Let the dead bury their dead; instead, go and proclaim God’s kingdom to those who can be made alive. And if you set your hand to My plow, don’t look back—forward to the Kingdom, or back, into perdition.’
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